Distributed antenna systems include a base station (also known as a Radio Element Control or a Baseband Unit) and one or more remote transceivers (also known as Radio Elements or Remote Radio Heads). These components provide endpoints with wireless network access. Within a distributed antenna system, the remote transceivers are distributed among different locations while being connected via a wired connection (e.g., optical fiber) to the base station. Each remote transceiver (or a subset thereof) transmits essentially the same core data, and the endpoint combines multiple signals from multiple remote transceivers into a single communication. The base station may communicate with the remote transceivers to facilitate transmissions between the base station and the endpoint. For example, the remote transceivers may relay control information and/or data between the base station and one or more endpoints.
A distributed antenna system may implement downlink coordinated multi-point processing (DL CoMP). DL CoMP is a special type of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) transmission where multiple transmitting antennas are placed at different locations (either on a base station or a remote transceiver), while the receiving antennas are located on the endpoint. Transmissions from multiple physical antenna ports at different locations (either from different base stations or from different remote transceivers) to the same endpoint using the same physical resource blocks (PRBs) are coordinated by the transmitting base station(s) and/or remote transceiver(s).